Our new Indie Games subforum is now open for business in G&T. Go and check it out, you might land a code for a free game. If you're developing an indie game and want to post about it, follow these directions. If you don't, he'll break your legs! Hahaha! Seriously though.

Our rules have been updated and given their own forum. Go and look at them! They are nice, and there may be new ones that you didn't know about! Hooray for rules! Hooray for The System! Hooray for Conforming!

Lost in Translation
Amadeus
Psycho
The Prestige
The Big Lebowski
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Vertigo
Alien
The Dark Knight
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
Wall-E
Pan's Labyrinth
Raiders of the Lost Ark
The Empire Strikes Back
The Incredibles
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
Hot Fuzz
Shaun of the Dead
Children of Men
Star Wars

It took a fair bit of tinkering, but I have no complaints aside perhaps from Star Wars being a tad high

in general, how many rankings do you need to make before your list starts evening out and looking the way you want it to?

do you mean the entire list of just your top 20?

Seriously. After 500+ ratings my top 20 is... passable, if not great. My bottom 20 is horrendous, though. I suspect thousands upon thousands of ratings would be necessary to make anything resembling an accurate list. They need a much better algorithm, something akin to Netflix that looks at not only your ratings but those of others similar to you.

in general, how many rankings do you need to make before your list starts evening out and looking the way you want it to?

do you mean the entire list of just your top 20?

Seriously. After 500+ ratings my top 20 is... passable, if not great. My bottom 20 is horrendous, though. I suspect thousands upon thousands of ratings would be necessary to make anything resembling an accurate list. They need a much better algorithm, something akin to Netflix that looks at not only your ratings but those of others similar to you.

yeah, same. I haven't looked at the bottom of my list but when you get say

hot fuzz vs. true romance

and I haven't had either yet, one is going to the middle of my list and one is going to the bottom... and both should be in the top 50 probably. though that at least makes more sense than the lack of a better process.

in general, how many rankings do you need to make before your list starts evening out and looking the way you want it to?

do you mean the entire list of just your top 20?

Seriously. After 500+ ratings my top 20 is... passable, if not great. My bottom 20 is horrendous, though. I suspect thousands upon thousands of ratings would be necessary to make anything resembling an accurate list. They need a much better algorithm, something akin to Netflix that looks at not only your ratings but those of others similar to you.

Indeed. I called it quits tonight when I hit 1100 movies ranked in well over 2000 ratings, and my top 20 still has a long way to go. Close Encounters, while an excellent film, is definitely not my #2, and there are many movies that deserve to be much higher than the 100-200 wasteland they find themselves in right now, but they only seem to come up against movies I already have ranked lower. I still have movies in my top 20 that have only been rated vs others 2-3 times, while there are great films that I've chosen 100% of the time 10 or more times that sit 150 spots down in my rankings just because they never manage to match up with anything ranked higher for me.

It's still strangely enjoyable to sit and contemplate which of 2 sometimes completely disparate films I prefer, but the overall ranking system pretty much sucks.

in general, how many rankings do you need to make before your list starts evening out and looking the way you want it to?

do you mean the entire list of just your top 20?

Seriously. After 500+ ratings my top 20 is... passable, if not great. My bottom 20 is horrendous, though. I suspect thousands upon thousands of ratings would be necessary to make anything resembling an accurate list. They need a much better algorithm, something akin to Netflix that looks at not only your ratings but those of others similar to you.

Indeed. I called it quits tonight when I hit 1100 movies ranked in well over 2000 ratings, and my top 20 still has a long way to go. Close Encounters, while an excellent film, is definitely not my #2, and there are many movies that deserve to be much higher than the 100-200 wasteland they find themselves in right now, but they only seem to come up against movies I already have ranked lower. I still have movies in my top 20 that have only been rated vs others 2-3 times, while there are great films that I've chosen 100% of the time 10 or more times that sit 150 spots down in my rankings just because they never manage to match up with anything ranked higher for me.

It's still strangely enjoyable to sit and contemplate which of 2 sometimes completely disparate films I prefer, but the overall ranking system pretty much sucks.

Part of the problem seems to be that it's more interested in population rankings rather than individual rankings.

Besides that, they need a recalculate function that takes all your answers and generates a list that comes closest to being consistent with all of them.

I have to say I am having a much harder time deciding between two bad movies then I am good movies.

Planet of the Apes (Marky Mark version) vs Don't Mess with the Zohan is a much harder choice than
raiders of the lost ark vs star wars

My god you have to sink some serious time into the site to get any kind of representative top 20. It took me thirty minutes of actual work to knock Shreck off of the number one position in my top 20 and this is for a movie that I would not put in my top 250.

Speaking of not being able to rank bad movies:
Barbed Wire vs The Shadow. That has to be the hardest decision yet.

I'm tempted to say that not caring that you haven't seen the first four makes you a bad person. Not having seen them certainly qualifies you as deprived.

The Departed though? Yeah, don't worry about that one.

Top ranked films I haven't seen:

43. No Country for Old Men
102. Aladdin
111. The Royal Tenenbaums
115. Trainspotting
148. Casino

No Country will be taken care of this week thanks to Netflix. Aladdin and Casino are the two I don't care about, and Tenenbaums and Trainspotting are both films I'd like to watch eventually, but never quite get around to.

1. Wall-E
2. There Will Be Blood
3. Magnolia
4. The Purple Rose of Cairo
5. Amelie
6. The Royal Tenenbaums
7. Children of Men
8. Ratatouille
9. Star Wars
10. Up
11. Dr. Strangelove
12. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
13. Toy Story
14. Collateral
15. Adaptation
16. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
17. 28 Days Later
18. The Empire Strikes Back
19. Miami Vice
20. The Life Aquatic

I have no clue how Collateral got there. The others are accurate though.

1. Wall-E
2. There Will Be Blood
3. Magnolia
4. The Purple Rose of Cairo
5. Amelie
6. The Royal Tenenbaums
7. Children of Men
8. Ratatouille
9. Star Wars
10. Up
11. Dr. Strangelove
12. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
13. Toy Story
14. Collateral
15. Adaptation
16. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
17. 28 Days Later
18. The Empire Strikes Back
19. Miami Vice
20. The Life Aquatic

I have no clue how Collateral got there. The others are accurate though.

Why does everyone fucking hate on Citizen Kane? I don't understand how you could think it's a "shit" movie. It has a good story, isn't long, Orson Welles is good, and is extremely well shot and put together.

I feel like people who shit on Citizen Kane are also people who hate the following "old and boring" movies:
Casablanca
Gone with the Wind
Lawrence of Arabia
Vertigo
The Maltese Falcon
To Kill a Mockingbird
I could go on...

Citizen Kane isn't even in my top 20 of favorite movies. Not by a long shot. It is a good movie though, and the reason it ended up at the top of all these "greatest films" lists is because it revolutionized filmmaking.

Personally I think it's impossible to call Citizen Kane crap and turn around and say Shawshank Redemption and Shindler's List are favorites - I find them to be similar films. I enjoyed them all when I saw them, but when I think "what do I want to watch" for a comfort movie of any kind they definitely don't come up.

Sorry for the rant but I feel like Citizen Kane is unjustifiably shit on by people who either haven't seen it, or went into it thinking "BORING" and didn't actually watch it.

Why does everyone fucking hate on Citizen Kane? I don't understand how you could think it's a "shit" movie. It has a good story, isn't long, Orson Welles is good, and is extremely well shot and put together.

I feel like people who shit on Citizen Kane are also people who hate the following "old and boring" movies:
Casablanca
Gone with the Wind
Lawrence of Arabia
Vertigo
The Maltese Falcon
To Kill a Mockingbird
I could go on...

Man, I haven't seen any of these. I need to brush up on my classics.

Right now the site thinks 12 Monkeys is my favorite film and puts Boondock Saints in my top ten. I don't even like Boondock Saints! And, I mean, 12 Monkeys was good and all, but not that great.

Why does everyone fucking hate on Citizen Kane? I don't understand how you could think it's a "shit" movie. It has a good story, isn't long, Orson Welles is good, and is extremely well shot and put together.

Citizen Kane isn't even in my top 20 of favorite movies. Not by a long shot. It is a good movie though, and the reason it ended up at the top of all these "greatest films" lists is because it revolutionized filmmaking.

Personally I think it's impossible to call Citizen Kane crap and turn around and say Shawshank Redemption and Shindler's List are favorites - I find them to be similar films. I enjoyed them all when I saw them, but when I think "what do I want to watch" for a comfort movie of any kind they definitely don't come up.

Sorry for the rant but I feel like Citizen Kane is unjustifiably shit on by people who either haven't seen it, or went into it thinking "BORING" and didn't actually watch it.

Citizen kane is nickelback of the movies.

But seriously I don't give bonus for movies for historical purposes. Metropolis and original king kong were both revolutionary in their times, but are still pretty lousy on modern standards.

Casablanca (14th on my list)
The Maltese Falcon (32nd)
Gone with the Wind (low because paired against awesomer movies)

All of these I've seen and they're still great, because they weren't revolutionary movies, they were simply awesome movies.

On side about artsier movies: Anyone seen and liked the Dancer in the dark (the bjorks movie)?
I went to see it in theater back when it was new and I was definately youngest (20:sh) audience member by margin of 20+ years to next youngest that watched the whole movie.

Why does everyone fucking hate on Citizen Kane? I don't understand how you could think it's a "shit" movie. It has a good story, isn't long, Orson Welles is good, and is extremely well shot and put together.

I feel like people who shit on Citizen Kane are also people who hate the following "old and boring" movies:
Casablanca
Gone with the Wind
Lawrence of Arabia
Vertigo
The Maltese Falcon
To Kill a Mockingbird
I could go on...

Citizen Kane isn't even in my top 20 of favorite movies. Not by a long shot. It is a good movie though, and the reason it ended up at the top of all these "greatest films" lists is because it revolutionized filmmaking.

Personally I think it's impossible to call Citizen Kane crap and turn around and say Shawshank Redemption and Shindler's List are favorites - I find them to be similar films. I enjoyed them all when I saw them, but when I think "what do I want to watch" for a comfort movie of any kind they definitely don't come up.

Sorry for the rant but I feel like Citizen Kane is unjustifiably shit on by people who either haven't seen it, or went into it thinking "BORING" and didn't actually watch it.

Eh, while Citizen Kane is obviously very important because of what it did for film making, I just don't find it nearly as enjoyable to watch as any of the other films you listed. It truly is boring for me by comparison. The Maltese Falcon, while not boring, also doesn't quite stack up with the others for me, but classics like North by Northwest or Rear Window would certainly take their places for me among the great films of all time. Casablanca and Rear Window will both probably be in my top 20 once it shakes out, and the others most likely in the top 100. Citizen Kane will probably end up several hundred spots lower though (I think I'm at about 1,250 movies ranked right now, and ever-climbing) - in the realm of good, but not outstanding for me.

It would certainly be a far more important film than most, if not all, of the films ranked ahead of it for me, but not a more enjoyable one. And that's how I'm ranking on this site - based on what I prefer watching, not on what is more objectively a better film.